


Certificate of Life

by gelasius



Category: White Collar
Genre: Gen, Multi, Trans Character, Trans Male Character, Transfic Mini Fest, Transgender
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-04-28
Updated: 2010-04-28
Packaged: 2017-10-09 14:24:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 809
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/88421
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gelasius/pseuds/gelasius
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for the 2010 <a href="http://kanata.dreamwidth.org/1255196.html">3 Weeks For Dreamwidth Transfic Minifest</a>, prompt by secondsilk:</p><p><em>White Collar, ftm!Neal (slash with Peter welcome). Peter knows all the intimate details of Neal's life, and he's used each of them against him, except for this.</em></p>
            </blockquote>





	Certificate of Life

Moz slides the well-worn page across the table, and Neal hesitates a moment before picking it up. "I can't believe you kept that all these years," he is saying, again, and Neal ignores it, again. His eyes skip past _Certificate Of Live Birth_ at the top and fall on a line further down; his thumb comes to rest on a tiny, innocuous **F**. He smiles a little sadly.

"It's history, Moz."

*****

The birth certificate was the first thing he'd ever stolen — really stolen, from grownups, not convinced the kid in the next bunk to hand over by flashing a gap-toothed smile and a promise-not-to-tell. The first three things he'd stolen, actually, because when you're eight and can't understand why the grownups keep insisting you're a girl, you tend to be clumsy and none too clever about hiding places. The nuns had confiscated it twice.

"Ava, why do you keep trying to steal that thing?" Brittany Nicole asked one day when they were just-nine. That morning, attempt number two had been thwarted — he liked words like _thwarted_, and used them as often as possible even if they made Brittany roll her eyes — and he was sulking.

"Call me Frank," said Ava Caffrey.

That made Brittany scrunch up her freckled nose over a bite of peanut butter sandwich. "That's a stupid name."

*****

Peter asks, "Have you ever met a woman who didn't..." and Neal does a mental double-take. He thinks sometimes that Peter knows every detail of his life, past, present, and future. He laughs it off, and Peter doesn't press.

*****

With Brittany's help, Attempt Number Three turned into months of planning, with charts and schemes and more deviousness than Ava... than _Frank_ had thought possible. She was right, though. They set the date of the heist (another spectacular word!) for Christmas Eve, when half the staff was home with their families and all the kids were stuffing themselves with dry turkey and overcooked pies. Brittany provided the distraction, because she could cry on cue, and found a cave nearby for a hiding place. They met there afterwards, shivering in the New England frost and huddling together and clutching their spoils. He put his head on her shoulder and turned his face up to hers and was absolutely sure he would never love anyone else in the whole entire world.

"Nice job, Av...Frank," she whispered.

He bit his lip. "You're right. That is a stupid name. Maybe... I feel like a Dean. Or maybe Danny. Like Danny Ocean!"

She studied his face for a very long moment, thinking. "Neal," she said finally. "Your name is Neal. With an _A_."

*****

It was three years into chasing him that Peter finally tracked down the real birth records, Neal finds out later. The ones the FBI officially knows about are the excellent forgery Neal had made and slipped into the Massachussetts Registry of Vital Records and Statistics —hardcopy and electronic— when he was sixteen, that recorded his name as Neal Caffrey and didn't have a tiny innocuous glaring **F** anywhere. Peter never put the real ones in his file.

"Why didn't you ever tell them?" Neal asks him once, after prison, after the anklet. It's late, they're sitting at Peter's dining room table, and El is pouring wine in the kitchen. She doesn't look up, but the angle of her head shifts and Neal knows she's listening.

Peter's doing that little half-smile he usually does when he's on the phone with El, or when her back is turned, but he doesn't answer.  
El's hand appears over Neal's shoulder, handing a glass of red to Peter, and she rests her hands on Neal's shoulders, leans over so her lips are by his ear. Neal doesn't look away from Peter, and it's like the answer is coming from him, and maybe it is.

"Because he wasn't chasing Ava Caffrey," El murmurs, and kisses his cheek.

Peter's half-smile becomes a grin as Neal jumps, and he meets his wife's eyes above Neal's head and Neal could swear he _winks_.

"You're not chasing me anymore either," Neal says, recovering.

"Nope," Peter returns, and taps Neal's wrist with one finger. "Now we've got you."

*****

The week before he turned ten, Neal Caffrey ran away for the first time. He begged Brittany to come too, but she told him she wasn't quite that devious..._quite that lubricious_, Neal thinks, and besides, somebody had to stay behind as a distraction right? Neal tried really hard not to cry, and it almost worked.

*****

It's getting light when the three of them — Peter, El, and their Neal — finish the bottle of wine. The bit of paper, the ragged bit of history that waited for years in a deposit box in DC until Neal had Moz retrieve it, sits carefully folded in the Burke's safe. It seems like the best place, for now.


End file.
